


Nothing Satisfies Me (But Your Soul)

by hiza-chan (callunavulgari)



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Dark, M/M, Reapers, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-31
Updated: 2012-03-31
Packaged: 2017-11-02 20:17:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/372970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/hiza-chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's seen this boy a thousand times in a thousand different faces-- he isn't a rarity. Average even. But still, Axel mends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Satisfies Me (But Your Soul)

**Author's Note:**

> Axel as a Reaper. I blame smoking cigarettes in the cold and listening to "Oh Death" by Jen Titus on repeat.

The first time, the boy is seven. By all accounts, it should be a touch and go grab. Drowning, after all, isn't very complicated.  
  
But there's something about the boy- blonde curls, blue eyes, chubby baby face. It's a face not altogether uncommon, he's seen it a thousand times. The baby faced boy that is always made fun of in school by the boys and crushed on by the girls. He knows how this boy's life would play out- move on to high school, become bookish- reclusive, intelligent enough that he'll probably get a decent paying job, maybe a wife, some kids. He doesn't seem like a dog person- perhaps a cat.  
  
He's seen this boy a thousand times in a thousand faces-- he isn't a rarity. Average, even.  
  
His family life is a lesson in normalcy as well. Kindly parents, twin brother, a little sister. They aren't a bad sort, the boys family. He remembers his grandfather, even. Kind, if a bit too clever.  
  
But this boy, for all that he isn't eccentric, isn't particularly different- there's something about him.  
  
Maybe that is why he moves on. Maybe that's why he carefully guides the boy back to shore, where his twin is frantic with worry. He doesn't know why, but he doesn't question his own flights of fancy, so he lets it happen.  
  
The boy's mother cries.  
  
Axel moves on.  
  
.  
  
The second time, he is eight. Car accident. Again- something stops him. So he pulls the boy's ribcage back together, removes the shrapnel from his liver, sews that heart back into his chest- makes it beat.  
  
He leaves the boy, broken and bruised and bleeding- but breathing.  
  
The sister is not so lucky.  
  
.  
  
Skip, the third time. Thirteen.  
  
Axel was right. The boy's too pretty. Especially to be walking the darkened streets alone. He presses the lips of flesh together, seals the lacerations tight. He straightens the broken neck, snaps his spine back together. Removes the blood from between the boy's spread thighs.  
  
He takes the boy's memory with him, not because he is being kind, but because the memory may make the boy beckon to him again too soon.  
  
Axel leaves the boy on his porch- presses temporarily corporal fingers to the doorbell.  
  
He is gone by the time the brother opens the door.  
  
.  
  
Fourth time, fifteen.  
  
It's cold- December, he thinks. There are carols being sung and too many people lying in bathtubs with their life dripping onto the tile below. The boy is no different, but this time, he is still awake. Not quite there yet. The boy is squinting at him through the steam, blue eyes narrowed and shrewd.  
  
Ah yes, perhaps this is why he is different.  
  
"Who are you?" he asks, and yes, isn't that the question. Axel knows it well. He doesn't answer, just slides down next to the bathtub, a few inches to the right of the slowly widening puddle of blood. It will reach him soon- stain his cloak, and who knows what will happen then. He's never had the blood touch him before.  
  
The boy is as quiet as the bathroom he's in. The mirror is fogged, condensation clinging and obscuring their reflections. Axel wonders, does he have a reflection? Or would the boy just see himself? The thought makes him choke out a cobwebbed, dust-ridden laugh.  
  
"My name is Roxas," the boy says, lids slipping closed.  
  
Axel laughs again, because yes, of course he knows.  
  
So he mends the wrists, leaves the faintest of scars- a reminder, perhaps, that the boy is intelligent, and this is a mistake that should never know repetition. Axel has broken enough rules for him.  
  
He strokes the boys hair til he wakes, allows himself that one small pleasure, and only then does he leave.  
  
Axel has always known the boys name, but now, he calls him by it.  
  
.  
  
Fifth time, May 23rd. Roxas is seventeen.  
  
Boating accident. Not drowning this time, he'd been caught amongst the wreckage. Axel finds him this time, his side torn through by the propellers. His intestine drift sadly in the water, amongst the wood and plastic.  
  
Again, Axel mends.  
  
Again, the young boy he was with is not so lucky.  
  
.  
  
Sixth time, nineteen.  
  
"Stop dying," he hisses in the boy's ear.  
  
Roxas laughs, blood dripping down his face. He looks at Axel and his eyes are wide, full of curiosity. Intrigue. The bullet has pierced his lungs and the dirty alleyway he's lying in is no place for his blood. He's gurgling faintly- lips red and slick and dripping. When he coughs, more blood spews forth.  
  
He's smiling.  
  
When Roxas leans closer, Axel should smell blood and come and urine, but all he can smell is the boy's soul, sweet and cloying, like nectar. He presses those lips to Axel's cheek, red, and Axel can feel the wet against him. Knows that the imprint will stay.  
  
The boy's smile widens and his teeth are stained red.  
  
"Then stop fixing me," he whispers.  
  
Axel fixes him.  
  
He still doesn't know why.  
  
.  
  
Seven. Another car accident. Another friend.  
  
.  
  
It's March 15th, and Roxas is burning.  
  
By the time Axel realizes who he's there for, Roxas is all but melted flesh in a burnt out shell of an apartment. The fires are still smoldering, and Axel can't see the blue of his eyes, because the eyes are gone. His bones crackle and pop, his tongue boils.  
  
It will be hard to mend this time. Harder to build up from nothing than to just fix the broken pieces.  
  
Still.  
  
He does.  
  
Eighth time.  
  
.  
  
Skip. It's not Roxas this time. But Roxas is _there._  
  
He gets a lot of deaths at parties. Not too terribly many, but enough that he's used to the rank scent of weed, the burning taste of alcohol in the air. This one is no different- loud music, the smell of sweat and come and drugs thick and cloying, saturating the house. He can almost taste it- the possibilities. A girl is drinking too much, an older man with a history of heart problems is getting a little bit too enthusiastic with the girl he's fucking. Possibilities- endless. But he knows who he's here for.  
  
In the middle of it all is Roxas- wide eyes glazed with a mixture of all these elements. He's talking to someone- a friend, Axel thinks.  
  
"And to think," Roxas grins, joint dropping ashes onto his shoe, "most people are just fucked up. Me? I'm in love with fucking _death-_ how fucked up is that?"  
  
The friend laughs. The other boy thinks that Roxas is joking- that it's just one of those things that kids are into today. That Roxas loves the idea of it all, that he writes angsty poetry and collects skulls and pentacles and that he toys with the idea of sacrificing goats on Sundays. But Axel- Axel knows what he means.  
  
He catches Roxas' eyes from across the room- watches them widen, listens to the way the boy's heart falters in his chest. He's afraid. Axel knows this.  
  
Axel shakes his head. _Not today, Roxas_ , and watches the play of relief, worry, and curiosity play across the boy's face. _Who is it?_ Axel can almost hear him ask. He slips in close- between swaying bodies and lit cigarettes, slides as close to Roxas as he can get without touching someone.  
  
Roxas' eyes are bluer when he isn't dying.  
  
He smiles and tries not to let the grimness show- drops a kiss atop Roxas' head. Roxas' curls, Axel thinks, are much softer without the gel.  
  
On the second floor, someone starts to scream. He pulls away reluctantly.  
  
He's late.  
  
.  
  
Nine. Poison.  
  
Who gets poisoned in this day and age?  
  
Roxas' eyes are hazy, dimming. Closer to gray than blue. He looks confused.  
  
Not confused enough that he doesn't make the effort to lift himself off the pavement and press his lips to Axel's.  
  
It burns, the kiss. It sears something into him, his very essence. It feels familiar and cherished, like something he's forgotten. And for a moment, Axel forgets. He presses forward- he kisses back.  
  
Roxas comes back to life in his arms.  
  
Axel leaves.  
  
He trembles.  
  
.  
  
Ten and eleven and twelve-  
  
("You can't do this forever,"  
  
A smirk, like barbed wire.  
  
"I think you'll find, I can.")  
  
.  
  
Thirteen. Roxas is twenty six.  
  
Roxas is watching him over the edge of his bed, eyes red rimmed. Axel's not sure why he'd been crying. He should know by now that even if he goes, Axel won't let him _stay_ gone. Perhaps it was his friends, their good-byes. His brother's tears have always been contagious.  
  
Roxas looks tired.  
  
Axel thinks that maybe Roxas will say something about cancer, maybe he will say, "not serious enough for you?" Maybe he will ask the question that Axel's been dreading. "Why me? Why are you doing this? Why am I special? Why not Xion or Demyx or Namine or that girl from the party?" He doesn't have the answers to these, but he's expecting them nevertheless.  
  
What Roxas says instead is, "You never stay."  
  
It pulls Axel up short- confuses him, because of course he doesn't. He may be everywhere, but the time that he spends with Roxas always seems different. Time is not quite fluid, and neither is Death. He may be with Roxas, mending his kidneys or his liver or whatever is wrong with him, but he is also in Los Angeles, with a homeless man. In the Philippines, with an old woman whose heart is giving out. He is in Egypt and Rome and Kenya and Antarctica. Things die, and he will always be there for them.  
  
More time with Roxas would not be difficult, certainly not more difficult than pulling life from the cracks of the universe and feeding them into the boy's frail body. But it is not quite... the best idea. He is Death. Death has no reason to spend excess time with a human.  
  
Something must show on his face- in his eyes- perhaps the shifting of his cloak, because Roxas closes his eyes again, rubbing a weary hand across them.  
  
"I see," he says, and then- "It's fine, really, I just-" he stutters and then clasps his lips tightly shut. They go pale. He sighs.  
  
"When do I go this time?"  
  
Axel does not know what to say to that- to anything, the implications, the unspoken questions, or the boy's exhaustion. So he goes for truth.  
  
"I'm early this time," he breathes, settling at the end of the bed. Immediately, Roxas looks wary.  
  
"How early?"  
  
Axel shrugs. "You have two months, eight days, seven hours, and twenty-three minutes left. Thirteen seconds if you really want the nit and gritty."  
  
Roxas glares at the wall, his hands clenched tight in his lap, knuckles white.  
  
"Why so early this time? You've always been so punctual." He hisses the last word like a curse, and Axel feels the air go sour with rage. Axel looks away, towards the same wall that Roxas is eying. There are pictures there, candid shots of him and his friends. A few of him and his brother, a note from their parents. Even a small, aged snapshot of him and his little sister.  
  
She's wearing a pink dress with big purple polka dots.  
  
He looks at her happy smile and thinks of the way her small hand had clenched his elbow when he'd taken her soul. Little Xion and the way she'd looked at him, six years old, blue eyes brimming with tears. How she'd said, "Please, help my brother," and how he'd smiled and replied, "Don't worry, darling. He's in good hands."  
  
He's still looking at her little pink dress when he says quietly, "It will not be quick."  
  
Roxas scoffs, "So?"  
  
"You will take weeks to die and you will do so in agony, in _fear_. The wait will tear you apart. It will not be pleasant."  
  
Roxas' hand curls and uncurls in his lap, and Axel aches to take it in his own.  
  
"Were you human once?" Roxas asks, and when he looks up, his eyes are laced with that familiar curiosity. Axel only wishes he could sate it.  
  
"I don't know," he answers honestly, because he doesn't. All he's ever known is this- the press of the dead and the dying. There is no before, not for him.  
  
There is silence, save the beep of the heart monitor- the shuffling of the nurses and the moans of the dying. Axel shifts on the bed, lets the metal end piece press into the knobs of his spine. What should be his spine. Down the hall a woman dies, and he takes her.  
  
In this room though, he squirms restlessly- scuffs the heel of his boot against the floor. It leaves a mark. So funny.  
  
"When are you going to stop doing this?"  
  
Axel turns and looks at him. His eyes are still blue, his hair still blond. He's pale- gaunt with sickness and pain, but he's still the same.  
  
He looks at Roxas, and thinks he feels sad.  
  
"When are you going to learn how to live?"  
  
.  
  
Roxas learns how to live.  
  
.  
  
Fourteen. August. Roxas is eighty six.  
  
When he sees Axel, he smiles. It's a broad thing- gaps between his teeth, wrinkled, spotted flesh stretching. He still has dimples.  
  
When Axel extends a hand, he takes it. He doesn't even blink when his soul is tugged loose, such a golden thing, baby-cheeked and beautiful. The curls are blond again, eyes no longer clouded. When he looks at himself, he groans. "Well, that's not fair," he complains, "eighty years old and I'm back to getting carded."  
  
His smile is wicked, full of life. "So, where am I going now?" he asks.  
  
Axel grins.  
  
"Well, we just so happen to have a job opening..."  
  
Somewhere, a forest is burning. A shark is caught in a fishermen's snare. A house is leaking carbon monoxide, and the family doesn't know.  
  
Axel goes.  
  
Roxas follows.  
  
.


End file.
